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SECOND THOUSAND. 



THE AMERICAN WAR: 



THE AIMS, ANTECEDENTS, AND PRINCIPLES 
OF THE BELLIGERENTS. 



A LECTURE, 



DELIVERED ON THE ]0th DECEMBER 1862, 
IN CASTLE STREET CHURCH, 



BY WILLIAM C. LENQ. 



PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF SEVERAL MINISTERS AND 
MERCHANTS OF DUNDEE. 



DUNDEE: 
PRINTED AT THE ADVERTISER OFFICE. 



MDCCCLXIII. 



__• 



.8 

,LS4 



LECTUKE* 

le 



One reason why I am about to advocate the cause of the North, is e 

because so much has been and is being said for the other cause, and o 

that a bad one — bad in its principles, bad in its antecedents, bad in d 

its aims. Frankly, then, I come before you with no affectation of e 

judicial coldness. My partialities and my prejudices I shall not a 
attempt to conceal. I am partial to Freedom, I am prejudiced 



against Slavery ; and if to-night, in the expression of my parti- 
alities, I may sometimes use language unduly impassioned, let me 
condone the offence by asking you to accept, as some compensation 
for my warmth, my sincerity ; for any singularity in my views, the 
painstaking inquiry which has preceded the formation of those 
views ; and for the unpopular tone of my observations, the reflection 
that in a modern lecture-room such a tone has at least something 
of rarity in its favour. 



POPULAR MISTAKES. 

Many mistakes are made about this American war. A mistake 
that the North made the war by taking up some new political posi- 
tion ; a mistake that at the beginning of the war a reasonablej a 
peaceable, and a friendly separation might have been made ; a 
mistake that slavery is not the chief cause of quarrel ; a mistake 
that the Constitution of the State srecognizes the right of Seces- 
sion ; and, oddest mistake of all, a mistake that the men of the 
North have more than the Southerns affronted us in times past, 
and that, in favouring Secession, we are somehow getting satisfac- 
tion for these affronts. This last mistake lies at the bottom of the 
ill-will which we see displayed here at this time against the people 



* This Lecture was first delivered about one mouth before the receipt of 
Mrs Stow's able Letter, in which, to some extent, may be found facts, quota- 
tions, and arguments mentioned here. 



4 



of the Free States ; and as it prejudices all the other questions 
connected with the war, I will deal with it specifically, and will 
consider it first. 

THE QUESTION OF GRUDGES— THE REPUBLICANS 
WITH US BY COMMUNITY OF PRINCIPLES. 

Now, the idea that those insults of the past, about which we are 
so sore, were peculiarly due to the North, is opposed alike to reason 
and to fact. It is opposed to reason. Consider for a moment the 
relative position of North and South ; and when I speak of the 
South, I use the term in a political rather than a geographical sense ; 
for is it not a grave injustice to reproach the North, as we see her 
reproached every day, with the doings of persons who, although 
located in Northern cities, are, in all their sympathies, their prin- 
ciples, and their business interests, members of the Southern or 
Democratic party ? And is it not 'manifestly wrong to taunt the 
North with her want of earnestness on the emancipation question, 
and at the same time to pat on the back those philo-Southerus 
whose presence on Northern ground alone justifies the taunt ? Tell 
me why the Northern proper — the Republican Northern — should 
have any quarrel with us that we should suffer the memory of 
old grudges to bias us at this time against the Republican party ? 
The Republican has been the only friend of Britain in America — 
the Democrat our constant enemy. We and the Republican 
were brothers in political sympathy. Our principles were his, our 
sentiments his, our political and social aspirations his. His 
chief men — Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, Channing, Parker, Irving 
— wrote of us and ours in terms of affectionate regard. He quoted 
our books, magazines, journals, against Slavery ; and when he was 
reproached by the Democrats for so doing, he frankly admitted the 
political alliance, acknowledged the moral compact ; and owning 
that it was we who had instigated him to the conflict, and were 
backing him in the fight, he resisted with new vigour the aggres- 
sions of the Slave Power. Nor did we on our side fail to identify 
ourselves with the Emancipationists. The scandalous advertise- 
ments, and more scandalous opinions, of the Southern organs were 
pilloried in Punch, were scarified by Jerrold, and were made the 



5 



texts of long leaders in the Times. But, Sir, the very reason 
which knitted the Republicans to us with the cement of sympathy, 
exasperated the Democratic or pro-Southern party. 

The party of the Slaveowners was, by its interests, its anti- 
pathies, and its political necessities, the enemy of Britain. Unable 
of themselves to carry the elections, the Slaveowners had, as a matter 
of necessity , to win for themselves allies in the North. Although five 
slaves count in the representation for three votes, so that the man who 
has 500 slaves was, in the representative system, as 300 voters rolled 
into one; and although, by this monstrous mockery of a franchise, the 
oppressors poll in the name of the oppressed 2,400,000 votes in 
favour of oppression, still this Slave-vote — cruel farce that it was — 
was not sufficient to make the Slaveowners the rulers of the Union, 
and help was therefore needful to them. The Irishmen of the 
North, and such of the business men of the North as had a stake 
in Slavery, were easily got to support Southern politics, The Irish 
masses were, by their prejudices, their poverty, their interests, and 
their ignorance, the ready instruments of the Slave party. For 
their prejudices there was the Democratic election cry of " War. 
with England ;" for their poverty a bribe ; for their interests as 
labourers the fear of competition with the free black ; and for their 
ignorance the loud " bunkum" in which the Democratic orators 
excelled. Among the business men of the North were thousands 
who, by marriage or hy business connexions, were so mixed up 
with Slavery that the very name of Abolition was regarded by 
them with anger and alarm. These joined the Southern party, and 
thus strengthened, the Democratic minority became, for all prac- 
tical purposes, a majority governing the whole nation in the inte- 
rests of a scheming, a restless, and an arrogant Slaveocracy, who, 
in opposition to the maxims of the Founders of the Republic, and 
in opposition to the sentiments of the thinking classes of the North, 
subordinated the best interests of the nation to their class interests 
for more than forty years. 

You see here the necessity — the party necessity — which made 
the haughty Slaveowner of the South bid for the votes of the des- 
pised Irish of the North. But there was something more than a 
political necessity at the bottom of this political partnership, there 
was a common feeling of animosity against this country. The 
Southerns have all along had powerful reasons for disliking us, and 



6 



for instilling into the American mind the keenest jealousy and mis- 
trust of us and our teachings. They aim at a reconstruction of the 
Union on a pro-Slavery hasis — we wish its reconstruction on an 
anti-Slavery basis. They seek to suppress the Abolitionists by 
force— we have for half a century encouraged the Abolitionists as 
the representatives of European opinions, and we are in honour bound 
to stand by Abolition now. They degrade labour by making it the 
brand of bondage, they brutalize the labourer by using him as a 
brute, they make of ignorance a sacred Southern institution, and 
guard it with terrible penalties ; while we lecture the labourer on 
the dignity of his vocation, and yut into active operation all those 
agencies specially designed to increase the intelligence, the inde- 
pendence, and, in a word, the manhood of the man. Their ways 
are not our ways : their thoughts are not our thoughts. We treat 
slavery as a heathen thing, worthy only of heathen hard-hearted- 
ness and lust — they preach it as a gospel, make of it a religion, 
and blasphemously torture the Bible to prove that labour-thieving 
is a duty divinely enjoined, that negro-flogging is a sort of pious 
exercise, that the Slave trade itself is a missionary institution, and 
that the Slave ships are laudably employed in bringing the accursed 
descendants of Ham to a knowledge of Christianity and the whip ! 
Our principles are wide as the poles asunder. We are proud of 
our commercial integrity; we seek to elevate the masses ; we pray 
for the liberation of the New World from that Slave system which 
was once the curse of Europe (or rather from a far worse slavery 
than ever cursed Europe) 5 but they make of labour a reproach, of 
education a crime, of the post office a worse than Russian espion- 
age, and of the press a wretched thing, terrorized over by Vigilance 
Committees ; — and, hoping to extend Slavery over new territories 
larger than the largest European empires, they have for their Pre- 
sident the great champion of repudiation, and the derider of the 
British bondholder 5 for their Vice-President the man who has pro- 
claimed that Slavery is to be the chief corner-stone of the new Con- 
federacy ; for their first Ambassador Mr Yancey, who once urged 
that the South should import black labourers as freely as the North 
imported Maltese mules ; for their second Ambassador Mr Mason, 
the author of the Fugitive Slave Law ; for their third Ambassador 
Mr Slidell, the patron of Walker, and the type of those Southern 
politicians who habitually abuse us and our county ; and for their 



7 

journalists the very men who have for years past insisted that our 
Slave Trade Preventive Squadron was an impertinence ; that the 
best condition of the working man, both white and black, is the con- 
dition of chattelage ; that emancipation is sheer infidelity ; that 
English Abolitionism is all hypocrisy, born of malice ; and that it 
is the duty of the South to make good by force and at any risk its 
claim to extend the blessings of its peculiar institution over Texas, 
Mexico, and every foot of American soil where it can be made to 
pay. 

What fellowship, I ask, can we have with such people ? What 
we most abhor they hold most sacred. What we most advocate 
they denounce in the fiercest language of a fanatical hate ; our very 
alphabet they have put under veto lest it should help the slave to 
think. Let me warn you that there can be no alliance with the 
new Confederacy unless you are prepared to renounce your most 
cherished principles. The North has submitted to shameful humi- 
liations in order to satisfy the South, and has failed ; and you too 
will fail unless you are prepared, for present gold, to unlearn the 
prayers your parents taught you ; to stifle your most holy aspira- 
tions ; to repeat backwards your political creed ; and to exhibit 
to Europe an apostasy so shameful that I could imagine in such case 
the good Angel of our nation spreading for flight her wings " wide 
as the wings of armies," and asking in mournful tones — 

* * * Hast thou raised 
The fiend of fiends, and made a compact dark, 
Sealed with thy blood, symbolic of the soul, 
Whereby much gold is given thee for a time, 
Much gain of cotton, to make more secure 
Thy Spirit's dread perdition at the end ? 
Was it with wand and circle, book and skull, 
With rites forbid, and backward jabbered prayers, 
And by instruction of the grim Slave-Fiend 
In cross-roads or in church-yard at full moon, 
That thou didst seal thy fall? 



THE SOUTHERNS THE AUTHORS OF THOSE BYGONE 
AFFRONTS, THE REMEMBRANCE OF WHICH IS 
OPERATING AGAINST THE NORTH. 

I have just shown that the Southerns had a strong motive for 



8 



abusing us, whereas the Republicans of the North looked to us as 
their political allies, and I now pass from motives to deeds. The 
war of 1812, the treatment of the boundary question, the shameful 
Mexican war, the affair of the Creole, the reception of John Mitchel, 
the Central American difficulty, the seizure of San Juan, the Ostend 
Manifesto, the outrages on our Slave Squadron, and the compara- 
tively recent rebuff administered to Lord John Russell for remind- 
ing America of her treaty obligations regarding the Slave Trade, 
were one and all the work of the South and its allies, and were 
reprobated by the great Republican party. To be pro-Slavery was 
to be anti-British ; and the words were almost synonymous at the 
elections. The war of 1812 was the work of President Madison, a. 
Southern man, surrounded by Southern subordinates. The South 
rejoiced over the fight, but Boston muffled its bells and went into 
mourning. In Congress, a band of Northerners, alike eloquent and 
courageous, persevered, in spite of menaces and obloquy, in denounc- 
ing the war as an unprovoked and wicked war, plotted by the South 
to serve Southern interests at the cost of truth and honour, and at 
the charge of those who, like themselves, desired to live in amity 
with their kindred of the great British nation. The Mexican war 
and the Boundary brawl greatly offended the people of this country, 
from the unscrupulous tactics and the vulgar menaces with which 
they were pushed. President Polk (or " Poke" as the Americans 
call him) — a Tennessee man, pledged to Southernism and Slavery, 
and elected to carry out that policy of filibustering yonder and of 
menace here by which the Slaveholders hoped to extend the area of 
the rule of the whip — was President of the United States during 
these difficulties. What the best men of the North thought of the 
filibustering irruption into Mexico may be seen in that inimitable 
Northern satire on the war, the world-famed Biglow Papers, and 
in the almost inspired eloquence of Dr Channing. The bombard- 
ment of Greytown was the work of President Pierce. That coarse 
outrage — the destruction of a town under our protection — was done 
under a President who, although a Northern by birth, was a South- 
ern in principles, and who was made President by the Southerns to 
carry out the predaceous schemes of the pro-Slavery party. Pierce 
was but a tool in the hands of the South, and his bombardment of 
Greytown was a slap in the face for John Bull. The State recep- 
tion of John Mitchel in New York took place in President Filmore's 



9 



time, and was got up as a demonstration against England. It, 
however, was rather the act of the Irish Democrats than of the 
Central Government; but, then, the Irish Democrats, although 
Northerns in location, are, as I have said, Southerns in principle, 
are the enemies of the negro, and of the negro emancipators, and 
would be delighted to see Jefferson Davis the master of Washing- 
ton. With their organ, the New York Herald, they are the sworn 
foes of our flag, and are but disguised Secessionists. The affair of 
the Creole took place in 1841, and caused great exasperation at 
the time. The Creole, a Virginian brig, was on her way to New 
Orleans when some slaves, who formed part of her cargo, rose on 
the crew, and, after wounding the captain and killing a passenger, 
got possession of the vessel and carried her into one of our West 
Indian ports. We declined to give up the slaves, and because we 
did so the Republicans of the States applauded, but the Slave States 
abused us furiously, and threatened us loudly and long with war. 
That was under Vice-President Tyler, who discharged the duties of 
President on President Harrison's death, and who, as a Southern 
man representing the complainers, was obliged to give a certain 
countenance to their complaints. The repudiation of the claims of 
the British bondholders was an act of robbery, about which much 
misapprehension exists. There is not in reality a Free State, 
Pennsylvania included, which has not honourably met its obliga- 
tions to the foreign bondholder. The only repudiating State is 
Mississippi. Maryland, Illinois, Pennsylvania, have all of them 
either repaid their loans or acknowledged the validity of their debts 
and duly paid the interest. The State of Mississippi is an excep- 
tion — and why an exception ? Because Jefferson Davis, now Pre- 
sident of the Southern Confederacy, was at the time of the panic 
elected a member of the State Legislature, on the strength of his 
vehement advocacy of the doctrine of repudiation, and because he 
and Governor Tucker, his friend, proved such able advocates of 
roguery that Mississippi is to this hour a defaulting State. It is 
difficult to exhaust the catalogue of the insults put upon us by the 
Southern party. It is known that the Ostend Manifesto, so out- 
rageous in its proposals, was the work of Mr Buchanan, the man 
who, as President, was, by General Scott, implored to put the 
Southern forts and arsenals in a condition of defence against the 
plotted insurrection of the South, but who, as a Democrat Presi- 



10 



dent, preferred a traitorous inaction to the observance of his oaths. 
Under this same Buchanan, General Harney, a Southern officer, 
seized San J uan ; and one of the last acts of Mr Buchanan's Govern- 
ment was to insult our Foreign Minister, Lord John Russell, in the 
rudest manner, for venturing to remind that Government, in cour- 
teous terms, that there was such a thing as a treaty for the sup- 
pression of the Slave Trade, that such treaty had been agreed to by 
America in consideration of our surrendering our right to search 
Slave ships carrying the American flag, and that the United States 
were not discharging the duties stipulated in that treaty. Indeed 
it is difficult to name any deliberate offence which has not a dis- 
tinctive Southern "stamp on it. Are we offended at the Protec- 
tionist tariffs of the States — it is odd that Calhoun, the father of 
Secession, was also the father of American Protectionism, and that 
the first tariff of the kind found in him its most zealous advocate. 
Must we side with the Confederate leaders because of old offences 
from the blustering Yankees '? Not so fast, I pray. The men 
whom we in wrath miscall " blustering Yankees," are many of them 
to-day those very Confederate leaders for whom our good wishes 
are asked. 

The Southerns our friends ! — the Slaveowner our ally ! Take 
down the map of the United States, then count the proportion of 
slaves to freemen in each of the Slave States, and wherever you 
find Slavery to be worst, there you find the States which are not 
only foremost in Secession but which have taken the most con- 
spicuous part in putting affronts upon the British nation. Missis- 
sippi, which stands alone in its infamy as a defaulting State, and 
which, adding insult to injury, made Jefferson Davis a legislator 
that he might deride and defy the defrauded bondholders of Britain, 
has 436,000 slaves to 354,699 free people. South Carolina, which 
for many along year has subjected our flag to the foulest indignity, 
by sending her police on board our ships to examine their crews, 
and take prisoners all their coloured seamen — this South Carolina, 
which, by the deliberate action of her local Senate, put British sub- 
jects in jail for having coloured blood in their veins, and which, in 
all its outspeakings, has been fanatical in denunciations of England 
and New Englanders — this South Carolina, whose leading news- 
papers, the Charleston Mercury and the Charleston Standard, have 
zealously advocated the reopening of the Slave Trade, and whose 



11 



people were the first to raise the standard of revolt, is the worst 
Slave State of all, for it has 101,000 more slaves than freemen. 
The Slaveowners the friends of England ! Why, through their 
tools the degraded whites — the hordes of semi-barbarons " white 
trash" (the name is their received Southern title) who are at once 
their victims and their dupes — through those oath-blurting, drink- 
sodden, knife-carrying, tobacco-squirting whites, who are so barbar- 
ous that the wild Kaffir in his kraal leads a cleanlier life than 
they, and who are so bad that the very planters say they corrupt 
the slaves, while the slaves on their part contemptuously call them 
" white trash" — aye, through such specimens of the " chivalry," 
decent farmers in Kansas, Missouri, Texas, long before this 
war, had their farmsteads ' burned, their stock carried off, and were 
in some cases hunted, tortured, shot at, or hanged, for no other 
reason, and on no other charge, than the holding of opinions akin 
to ours. To the plains of the West the missionaries of the Slave 
Power were sent in mobs ; their creed Slavery — their inspiration 
alcohol — their arguments rifles, revolvers, and bowie knives ; and 
before these wretches men like the gallant sons of old John Brown 
— immortal John — fell, murdered for the crime of holding British 
opinions on the question of Slavery. The Southerns our friends ! 
Absurd ! Not until we have bartered our principles for cotton, not 
until we have trampled under foot the proudest traditions of our 
nation, can the Slave States be friends of ours. And if the South- 
erns don't like us, why should we like them ? Their system curses 
the white man more than it does the black ; and while it cultivates 
the soil into barrenness, it has a deplorable effect on the offspring 
of the planters themselves. The Virginian gentry esteem them- 
selves the cream of the Southern chivalry, and hear what Lord 
Macaulay says of them : — " I affirm," said Lord Macaulay, whom 
no one will consider ill-informed or an enthusiast, " I affirm that 
there exists in the United States a Slave Trade not less odious nor 
demoralizing than that which is carried on between Africa and 
Brazil. North Carolina and Virginia are to Louisiana and Ala- 
bama what Congo is to Rio Janeiro God forbid that 

I should extenuate the horrors of the Slave Trade in any form. 
But I do think this is its worst form. Bad enough it is that men 
should sail to an uncivilized quarter of the world where Slavery 
exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and should carry 



12 



them away to labour in a distant land ; bad enough ! But that a 
civilized man, a baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of a 
Free State, a man frequenting a Christian Church, should breed 
slaves for exportation, and, if the whole horrible truth must be told, 
should beget slaves for exportation, should see his children, some- 
times his own children, gambolling around him from infancy, should 
watch their growth, should become familiar with their faces, and 
should then sell them for four or five hundred dollars a-head, and 
send them to lead in a remote country a life which is a lingering 
death — a life about which the best thing that can be said is that it 
is sure to be short — this does, I own, excite a horror exceeding 
even the horror excited by that Slave Trade which is the curse of 
the African coast. And, mark, I am not speaking of any rare case 
— of any instance of eccentric depravity. I am speaking of a trade 
as regular as the trade in pigs between Dublin and Liverpool, or as 
the trade in coals between the Tyne and the Thames." 



THE SYMPATHY WRONGLY PAID TO RESOLUTE 
PERSISTENCE IN WRONG. 

It appears to me that when an insurrection is made without any 
just cause of complaint at the back of it, then it is most plainly an 
unjust and causeless insurrection, and that a dogged persistence in 
it aggravates rather than redeems its criminality. Courage in 
crime does not justify crime. What then are we to make of that 
powerful source of sympathy with the South — the mere admiration 
of animal courage ? There are some who say the Southerns must 
be a superior people, " they fight so well" A Cowgate man said as 
much to me the other day, and I answered him that our fish-cadgers 
must, on the same principle, be a very superior people, for they 
fight oftener and better than any other class in Dundee. The 
truth is that the mass of the poor whites of the South enjoy the 
advantage of their previous familiarity with violence, and of their 
coarse, uncleanly, and half-civilized way of living. Consider the 
normal condition of the two classes of men. The Northern mechanic 
has a tidy little home, and washes himself and dresses himself 
almost like a gentleman ; the Southern poor of the villages live 
in log huts, open as basket work, and with nothing but a square 



13 



hole in the side for a window. The Northern citizen knows, perhaps, 
some smattering of astronomy, and, mayhap, something of the 
science of ventilation ; and, if he lives in the country and has a 
fancy for gardening, he has possibly a few creepers to adorn his 
porch. The low whites of the South also know something of 
astronomy, but it is by seeing the stars through the chinks of 
the roof; they also know something of ventilation, but it is 
such ventilation as the Eed Indians have when they stuff their 
old women against the cracks and vents of their wigwams to 
keep out the cold ; and they also have their creepers, but 
then the creepers are inside the house, not out. The Southern 
is a good fighting animal, as is also the badger. His faults 
as a citizen become his merits when he takes the field. But 
let us not over-rate the courage of the Southern, He has other 
advantages than his recklessness of life, his savage violence of 
temper, his familiarity with instruments of death and with a rough 
hard way of living. Military officers are, in nearly all nations, con- 
tributed by the idler classes. The Slave State abounding in moneyed 
idlers, abounds in trained officers. And so skilfully have these 
men handled their troops that the Secessionists, though on the whole 
numerically inferior, have been in almost every instance numeri- 
cally superior at the points assailed. Generalship is everything. 
The ancients said that it was better to have an army of stags led 
on by a lion than an army of lions led on by a stag. But, let us 
not be told that we ought to sympathise with the insurgent Slave- 
Power because it is the weaker party, or because it is the better 
tactician. The reader of Milton's description of the campaign in 
Heaven will find that there the Devil was the weaker party ; was 
an excellent tactician ; and displayed extraordinary valour and en- 
durance in his conduct of the war ; but I have yet to learn that we, 
as good people, ought for such reasons to sympathise with Mm. 



SLAVERY A BLUNDER, AND, THOUGH A BLUNDER, 
THE ONE CAUSE OF THE WAR. 

Sir, Slavery and Slavery alone is responsible for the war. Had 
there been no Slavery, there had assuredly been no war ; and, to 



14 



illustrate the antagonism that exists between enforced labour and 
free, I will briefly describe what American Slavery has done. 

Over 2600 years ago, old Homer, who, although a Pagan and 
blind, had more of Christianity and foresight in him than some of 
our own people, said — 

" Jove fixed it certain that whatevei day 
Makes man a slave takes half his worth away." 

This old world opinion is quite true to-day. The most carefully- 
compiled statistics of our W est Indian Islands prove Slavery to be 
a blunder 5 for nothing can be more satisfactory than Mr Sewell's 
recent book on this subject. Adam Smith, Goldwin Smith, Pro- 
fessor Cairns, John Stuart Mill — all the highest political authorities, 
living and dead, support, by weight of reason, what Homer and the 
experience of our West Indian possessions allege. It is literally 
true that 

* * " Whatever day 

Makes man a slave takes half his worth away 

and consequently Slavery is a blunder as well as a crime. This 
fact is mentioned here because it lies at the bottom of the whole 
quarrel between the South and the North. Slave labour is a 
thriftless, shiftless, soulless thing. It is eye-service — all seeming, 
seeming. It is work done without heart and without mind. It is 
performed without interest, without hope, — feebly, ' grudgingly, 
thoughtlessly — and, therefore, it is the dearest kind of labour. The 
Slave system, as applied to cotton culture, is deplorably ruinous to 
the country in which it is carried on. The planters treat a new 
State as locusts treat a new field : they crop it until it is used up» 
and then they leave it for another. It would be an easy thing to 
give you a volume of quotations in proof of the wastefulness of 
slave work, but I will ask your attention instead to a brief notice 
of the comparative growth of the United States — slave and free. 
If you are friends of healthy progress ; if you regard with favour 
the system which gives the greatest good to the greatest number j 
if you like to see substantial wealth not locked up in the hands of a 
few, but generally diffused among the people ; if you like to see 
the working classes better dressed, better fed, better housed, better 
educated, or more valued for their personal worth, or more ac- 



15 



customed to cleanly, self-respecting, and, in a word, respectable 
habits of life than they are in Europe, then I may cheerfully invite 
you to study the rise and progress of the Northern section of the 
United States. In the one section labour is honoured, in the other 
it is degraded, and the comparative progress of the States is its own 
comment on the two systems. The best test of national prosperity 
is not to be found in population, for a people may be at once 
numerous and wretched ; nor in exports, for it is possible for a 
nation to export much, and themselves to enjoy but little. But it 
will be shown rather in the growth of things which, like the post 
office, the press, and the records of new inventions, bespeak the 
.activity of popular intelligence ; and it will also be found in the 
condition and number of the railroads, and the consumption of such 
articles as indicate a high state of civilization. Remember too 
that the North, with her long, severe winters, and her more 
niggard soil, has had to fight her way against peculiar difficulties. 
Yet, what are the facts ? There is wealth in the South, but it is in 
few hands ; there is abundant cultivation in the South, but it is an 
exhausting, and, therefore, a blighting cultivation ; there is a 
certain kind of prosperity in the South, but it is a kind that passes 
over the heads of the million ; and there is among the little planters 
and poor whites a certain civilization, but it is such as a civilized 
South Sea Islander would regard with discontent. Virginia, which 
at the first census held the first rank as a State, has since descended 
io the fifth rank. North Carolina, then the fourth, is now the 
twelfth in position. South Carolina, then the seventh, is, though 
teeming with blacks, and though endowed with rare gifts of climate 
and soil, down as low as the eighteenth place among the States. 
And as the Slave States lose rank the Free States rise. Virginia 
— old Virginia — once the Empire State, sees her fields exhausted, 
her land in process of abandonment, her poor miserably poor, her 
cleared land, near to Richmond itself, not one-fourth of it cultivated, 
and her once honest, and still haughty, gentry doomed to the de- 
grading business of dealing in human cattle for the Southern 
market. New York is now the Empire State, and Virginia is 
lagging far behind. Such facts do not rest on Northern authority. 
De Bow, a great pro-slavery oracle, thus describes the poor whites 
of the South. " They are a noble race of people (I am using the 
words of the pro-slavery champion) — a noble race of people reduced, 



16 



to a condition little above the wild Indian of the forest, or the 
European Gipsy, without education, and, in many cases, unable to 
procure the food necessary to develope the natural man." There 
i& an absolute going back in many parts of the South, where the 
inhabitants are positively less numerous and less comfortably- 
circumstanced than they were twenty years ago. I do not make 
the assertion on Northern data. Southern organs, reviews, news- 
papers, books, deplore the wretched condition of the " mean whites," 
and the decadence of whole counties, while others of them cry 
hush, hush ! and rebuke the indiscretion which, by making such 
lamentable confessions, strengthens the hands of the Abolitionists. 
It is odd that the same authorities which lament the ignorance and 
indolence of the low whites, counsel the prohibition of many 
standard authors and the revision of the common school books in 
their fears for Slavery, while some of them denounce even the 
verbal instruction of Slaves, as a thing tending to improve the 
Negro, and therefore dangerous. Need we wonder that the 
Southern peasant is a curiosity of ignorance ? Need we be 
surprised to find the effect of such wretched restrictions in the 
fact that the Free States register every year 2000 original inven- 
tions for every 300 registered by the South. Is it matter of 
mystery that, while Mr Slidell and the Grand Jury of Charleston 
are recommending as a panacea the re-opening of the African Slave 
Trade, the Free States, with their labour paid for (not stolen), 
and with their workers treated as men, own nine-tenths of the ships 
and three-fourths of the railroads ? Is there any puzzle 
about it if the North, with all its frost and snow, has con- 
tributed to the revenue in the proportion of eighteen to eight, and 
to the record of inventions in the ratio of ten to one — or to 
the national literature and the Post Office in such proportion that 
comparison ends, and contrast the most amazing remains ? If, 
during the last ten years, the increase of population in the North 
has been double that of the Slave States — Slaves included — if, in 
the South, the ships, the steamers, the carriages, the agricultural 
implements, nay, even the butter, buckets, brooms, axes, clothes, 
and also much of the hay are of Northern origin, should we be 
astonished at such results when we find Southern writers propos- 
ing to exclude the poems of Cowper, and to stop the teaching of all 
who, although not daring to teach letters to the Negroes, propose to 



17 



improve them into thinking creatures by means of verbal addresses 
and by preaching? Take a map of the United States and see how 
large is the Slave territory — how favoured in soil and climate — how 
admirably watered — how full of those oldest and best and cheapest 
of public roads — its noble rivers — then turn to the North and con- 
sider how it is that, with its scantier area, its almost arctic winter, 
and its haughtily independent labourers, the North, thus dis- 
favoured, is worth over three thousand million dollars more than 
the South. During the last ten years the Free States have gained 
five millions of people ; the Slave States, with all their Slaves in- 
cluded, two and a half millions. But the Secessionists have a way 
of dressing statistics, which is, as they would say, " smart." They 
count the log huts, in which people sometimes meet for worship, as 
churches, and thus they become great in churches. They count 
only the prisoners who come before the regular tribunals, leaving 
out the prisoners brought before Judge Lynch, and leaving out the 
thousands of cases in which the Slaveowner is at once the pro- 
secutor, the jury, and the judge, and thus in a land of violence and 
bloodshed — a land where the Slave, having no rights, thinks he has 
no duties, and where the mean white acts as a receiver of the goods 
stolen by the Slaves — we have the statistics which infer a small 
per centage of crime. They mak3 a cunning use, too, of the 
Mississippi. The Mississippi stretches its arms northwards into 
the magnificent grain-growing States — Free States mark you — of 
Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and into the half-Free States of 
Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee ; and thus the grain, grown by 
millions of free men in the most flourishing of the Free States, goes 
down to the Slave States for shipment, and is made to figure in 
the exports of the South. You must have seen instances, some of 
you, in which the export of the golden produce of free soil has of 
late been quoted in Secessionist newspapers as a proof of the in- 
dustry of the Slave Power. But I place little value on totals of 
material wealth. " Money," said Lord Bacon, " is like muck, it 
needs to be spread and in the Free States money is more evenly 
spread among the people than in any other portion of the civilized 
world. I am Democratic enough to delight in a progress like that 
of Iowa, where the wealth of the populace has increased 943 per 
cent, during the last ten years. But in the South the greatest 
poverty to the greatest number is the principle worked out. Less 



18 



than 10,000 large planters and a few merchants represent the really 
comfortable and cultivated classes of the Slave States. Below these 
planters and merchants we have a class of struggling small planters, 
who know less of the refinements of life than the citizen of the 
Northern States, and who are infinitely beneath him in knowledge ; 
and below this diminishing middle class what have we but the 
Slaves and those numerous mean whites described by De Bow — the 
semi-civilized whites, who huddle in windowless log cabins, who 
prefer the reputation of receivers of stolen goods to the stigma of 
being labourers, and whose ignorance is, according to an eminent 
Southern authority, as dense as that of the wild Indian of the forest, 
or the vagrant Gipsy of European States ? There is, I admit, a 
great deal of material wealth in the South. Here and there you 
find some one man who represents a great sum of property in the 
form of cotton and human flesh. The Slave States export largely, 
as also do Egypt, Cuba, Russia ; yet, as we do not take the Russiau 
serf to be the highest style of man, neither can we admire a system 
of society more demoralising than the serfage of Russia. The 
Southern system is criminally wrong. It defrauds the labourer of 
the fruits of his labour ; it intercepts the rewards of industry, and 
hands them over to the avowedly idle ; it tramples upon the many 
for the aggrandisement of the few ; it brands honest toil with the 
stigma of serfage ; it makes all useful occupation a thing to taunt 
the Northern with as a badge of inferiority ; it is, in brief, a gigantic 
conspiracy against the rights of mankind — a mighty organisation 
for the propagation of barbarism — a portentous revival of heathen 
cruelty, under the name of Christianity — a revolting form of rob- 
bery, sheer robbery, although devised by legislators, although advo- 
cated by divines, and although executed in the name of law. 



THE AGGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF SLAVERY. 

Now, this Slave system is aggressive. It and freedom cannot 
co-exist on the same continent without being either literally or vir- 
tually at war. It blasts with speedy exhaustion the soil on which 
it is established, and therefore it must ever seek new soil to exhaust. 
It must progress or perish — must dominate or die. It so happens 
that in the Free States are some millions of people who have made 



19 



up their minds that the best thing Slavery can do is to die out on 
the ground it covers to-day. And it so happens that there are cer- 
tain other millions who, having little love for man and less fear of 
God, would, on the score of vested interests, have the nation give 
guarantees to perpetuate and extend Slavery for all time to come. 
The quarrel between the conflicting parties is an old one, though 
the parties to it have assumed new names. Vested Interests I 
I suspect that Moses grievously injured a certain brick-making 
interest when he rescued the Jews from bondage. There are 
people in America who, had they lived in Pharoah's days, would 
have been for keeping the Israelites in slavery for ever ; and this 
they would have done out of respect for the — bricks — the national 
crop of bricks ; and these people call themselves the Democrats. 
The other people, who recognize the Heaven-sent plagues which 
accompany bondage, and who would have been for emancipating 
the subject race, and for leaving the great brick interest to take 
care of itself, are the so-termed Republicans of America. The 
Northern party came into power a little before its time. By this 
I mean that it got the majority less of its own strength than 
because of the divisions in the Democratic party — divisions which, 
strange as the thing may seem, were got up to the order of the 
leading Southern politicians, for the express purpose of facilitating 
the election of President Lincoln, that in his election the Southerns 
might have a pretext for " rushing" into Secession — the Southern 
leaders hoping, by the aid of traitors high in office, to surprise and 
overawe the North. Their plans were long and deeply laid, to be 
sprung suddenly as a mine is sprung. Buchanan, the President, 
and his Ministers knew of the plot, and aided it both by action 
and inaction. Their sins of omission are represented by Buch- 
anan ; their sins of commission by the active treason of Floyd. 
What Floyd did we know ; what Buchanan refused to do is proved 
in the startling revelations of General Scott. I am particular in 
thus defining the position of the respective parties, and I shall be 
equally so in stating their principles — using in each case Southern 
authorities as the exponents of Southern principles, and Northern 
ones when stating the views of the North. The Republicans hold 
opinions which certain wise people say are "unconstitutional ;" but it 
is odd that, both in their opinions and in their policy, these uncon- 
stitutional people are of the mind of the Fathers of the Republic 



20 



and are, if anything, more tolerant of Slavery than were those 
great men who made the Constitution. "Washington, the creator 
of the Union ; Madison, who drew up the form of the Constitution ; 
Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence ; Patrick 
Henry, the great Virginian orator ; John Randolph , himself a lead- 
ing Slaveowner, — all were of one mind on the subject of Slavery ; 
all were Republicans, for they looked on Slavery as an evil to be 
got rid of, a source of danger to be eradicated, a nuisance to be 
abated. Washington was an ardent Abolitionist at heart, as 
his letters to Lafayette prove. Jefferson said — " The abolition 
of slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies, where 
it was unhappily introduced in their infant state." Madison 
thought it wrong to admit into the constitution the idea that there 
should be property in man, and added, " Where slavery exists the 
republican theory becomes a fallacy." Monroe said — " Slavery has 
preyed upon the very vitals of the Commonwealth, and has been 
prejudical to all the States in which it has existed." Patrick 
Henry said — " Slavery is detested — we feel its fatal effects — we 
deplore it with all the earnestness of humanity." John Randolph, 
himself a slaveowner, said in Congress, in reply to a Northerner who 
had spoken approvingly of Slavery — " I envy neither the heart nor 
the head of that man from the North who rises here to defend 
Slavery on principle." John Quincey Adams said — " It is among 
the evils of Slavery that it taints the very sources of moral prin- 
ciples ;" and in his notes on Virginia, the author of the "Declaration 
of Independence" wrote these prophetic words — " Indeed, I tremble 
for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice 
cannot sleep for ever." There is no disputing these facts, and the 
Secessionists of America, less reckless than their British sympa- 
thisers, do not dispute them. The Vice-President of the Confederacy 
uses the following words — " The prevailing ideas entertained by 
Mr Jefferson and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the 
formation of the old constitution were, that the enslavement of the 
African was in violation of the laws of nature ; that it was wrong 
in principle socially, morally, and politically. Our new Govern- 
ment is founded on exactly opposite principles." I could multiply 
these admissions, but will merely give Governor Hammond's avowal. 
Hear Governor Hammond — " We haye become wiser than our fore- 
fathers ; they regarded Slavery as an evil to be removed, we regard 



21 



it as a good to be preserved." The Republicans, then, are, by the 
admissions of Vice-President Stephen and Governor Hammond, doing 
nothing more than holding by the principles and the policy of the 
Fathers of the Republic. If they are fanatics, then was George 
Washington a fanatic. If they are unconstitutional, then did Madi- 
son know nothing of those conditions of government which his able 
pen drew up ; and then were Jefferson, Randolph, Monroe, Patrick 
Henry, all — all — ignorant of the Constitution too. 

How sadly opinions have changed since the days when North 
and South were alike agreed that Slavery was a reproach and a 
danger to the nation, and since John Randolph stood up in Con- 
gress, with the flush of indignation on his honest face, and the light- 
nings of anger in his eye, to rebuke, as a Slaveowner and a man, 
the degenerate Nortkener, whose attempted justification of Slavery 
had excited at once his amazement and his scorn. That system 
which John Quincey Adams denounced in words of fire as u the 
sum of all villanies," and " the crime which comprehends all 
crimes," and of which he complains that " it taints the very sources 
of moral principles j" that system which Madison foresaw would 
make the Republican theory of Government a fallacy ; that system 
which made Jefferson say, in words startlingly solemn — " I tremble 
for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice 
cannot sleep for ever ;" that system has tainted the sources of moral 
principles in the South, has even corrupted half the North, has made 
the Republican theory a fallacy, and has brought on that righteous 
retribution which proves that God is just, and that His justice does 
not sleep for ever. To-day evil is called good, the curse of Ame- 
rica is preached up as a blessing, the men of Washington's mind 
are called fanatics and innovators^ the men of innovation are called 
11 Conservatives," and a man who came to political power as the advo- 
cate of national dishonesty, and who at the last Presidential election 
was the acknowledged head of those " Fire Eaters" who insisted on 
having Slavery guaranteed in the new territories whether the 
settlers wished it or no — this man of scandalous antecedents and 
more scandalous aims, having associated himself with the negro- 
hunting Mason, the would-be negro-importing Yancey and Slidell, 
and having at his command a press to advocate a return to feudal 
barbarism, and an army to enforce the preaching of that press — 
is now the President of a Confederacy framed, as its leaders frankly 
tell us, to conserve and extend Slavery. 



22 



THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 

It has been erroneously said, both here and in America, that the 
Constitution of the United States recognizes the right of Secession. 
It does nothing of the kind. I have looked through the Constitu- 
tion — through all its articles and clauses, through the amendments 
on it, through the long list of judicial decisions affecting it — line by 
line, and. I find, neither in the Constitution nor in the amendments, 
nor in the judicial decisions, a single sentence that recognizes? 
either directly or indirectly or by inference, this alleged right of 
Secession. The whole tenor of the Constitution is utterly incom- 
patible with a Secession based like this on the alleged right' of a 
minority to fly to arms when beaten at the poll. The Constitution 
consists of seven articles, five of which are composed of several 
clauses, and two of which consist each of a single clause. By the 
Constitution, Congress has power, and it only has power, to main- 
tain an army and navy, to establish post offices and post roads, to 
erect and hold forts, arsenals, and magazines, to make treaties, to 
declare war, to call forth the militia for the suppression of insurrec- 
tions, to apprehend and punish seditious persons and traitors, and 
to coin money for national use. By the Constitution Congress is 
as freely empowered to put down sedition, and to punish treason, in 
any and all of the States as it is to repel invasion. By the Consti- 
tution the treasonous action of separate States is defined and prohi- 
bited in terms which cannot be misunderstood. The States are 
told, in clear language, what they may and may not do, and what 
they may not do is precisely what they are now doing. If the Pre- 
sident violates the Constitution he may be impeached and tried, but 
insurrection against the Government of the United States is plainly 
prohibited. By the tenth clause of the first article, " No State shall 
enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation ; coin money ; 
emit bills of credit ; pass any ex post facto law, or law impairing 
the obligations of contract ; or grant letters of marque or reprisals 
all of which things the Confederate States are indubitably doing* 
By the same clause it is decreed that " No State shall, without con- 
sent of Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, 
except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspec- 
tion laws ; and the hett produce of all duties and imposts laid by any 
State on imports and exports shall be for the use of the Treasury 



23 



of the United States ; and all such laws shall be subject to the 
revision and control of the Congress. And no State shall, without 
the consent of Congress, lay any duty on tonnage, keep troops or 
ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact 
with another State or with a Foreign Power." By article the third 
the judicial power of the United States " is vested in one Supreme 
Court, and in such Inferior Courts as Congress may from time to 
time establish." And in controversies between the States the Su- 
preme Court has jurisdiction. Such are some of the conditions of 
the Constitution of the United States ; and it should be borne in 
mind that the President is, by his oath of office, solemnly sworn to 
uphold these conditions 5 and is expressly invested by the Consti- 
tution with the supreme command of the army, the navy, and the 
militia of all the States, in order that, with such large constitutional 
powers, he may the more easily fulfil the terms of his oath, and 
preserve from foes internal as well as external the nation he is 
sworn to defend. The notion that any State or number of States 
can, under the Constitution, leave the Union at pleasure, is amus- 
ingly odd. No less than twelve of the most important States have, 
by their own free will, joined the Union since 1801, and have, in 
joining it, adopted its Constitution. The Central Government has 
incurred debt in fostering these young States ; has, at the cost of 
the nation at large, provided them with forts, arsenals, lighthouses, 
buoys, dock yards, post offices, offices of customs and excise, and 
military and naval schools ; has defended them, on the one hand, 
against the Indians, and, on the other, against the foreigner ; and 
has, in some cases, positively purchased with money, chiefly North- 
ern, the very soil of the States from those Indian tribes or those 
European nations to whom several of the States originally belonged. 
Under such circumstances Secession means robbery. 



HOW THE CONFEDERATES HAVE OBSERVED THE 
LAWS OF THE CONSTITUTION. 

By the Constitution the freedom of the press and of the pulpit, 
and the right of trial by jury in all cases, civil as well as criminal, 
are things which even Congress has no authority to suppress. Yet, 
what Congress may not do the Southern States have done. 



24 



Garrison says — " Give me but one year of a free press in the Slave 
States and I will overthrow Slavery." The truth of Garrison's 
remark is felt in the South, and hence for many years past it has 
been a hanging matter for any man, editor or clergyman, who 
might venture to question either the wisdom or the morality of the 
"peculiar institution." Without trial by jury, without trial of 
any kind, without so much as a submission of the case to any 
authorised judge, hnudreds of honest men have either been 
driven out of the country or put to a sudden and ignominious 
death, for no other offence than for honestly exercising that 
freedom of speech which under the Constitution is the right of 
every citizen. I charge the Confederates with having outraged 
the Constitution in every way which perfidy could suggest, or 
fraud facilitate, or violence enforce. I charge them with having 
so suppressed the freedom of the press that the mass of the 
Southern people have no means of knowing the truth respecting 
a question of the profoundest importance to themselves and their 
posterity, and are in consequence living in a state of ignorance 
and degradation unparalleled in Christendom. I charge the poli- 
ticians of the South with having, by falsehoods of their own 
invention, practised on the credulous ignorance of "the mean 
whites" of the Slave States, in order to instigate those ignorant 
persons to further outrages on the Constitution. I charge 
Jefferson Davis with being the chief and leader of American 
repudiators, and with having resolved on Secession unless Congress 
would agree to the monstrous proposal that Slavery should be 
protected in the new States whether the settlers in those parts 
wished it or no. I charge the Slave States, and more particularly 
the State of Mississippi, with having, in defiance of the Constitu- 
tion, passed ex post facto laws impairing the obligations of con- 
tracts ; and I charge them further with having, at the time of 
Secession, contrary to the law of nations and to the usages of civilized 
people, passed another ex post facto law to absolve themselves 
from their enormous indebtedness to the loyal people of the North. 
I charge them with having deprived of their property the loyal 
men of the South, as the punishment of their loyalty, and with 
having waged war on the Constitution by means of the money and 
property thus stolen from loyalists, North and South, by acts of spoli- 
ation, which must stand alone in history as the most colossal immo- 



25 



ralities of modern times. I charge it upon the leaders of the Confede- 
racy, that under the Constitution they despoiled the armouries they 
were sworn to guard, weakened the fortresses they were bound to pro- 
tect, and betrayed to their fellow conspirators the great nation whose 
people had put into their unworthy hands the greatest honours, the 
chief emoluments, and the most sacred trusts of the State. I charge 
it upon the people of the South that they have, during the last two 
years, waged a war of extermination against Southerns suspected of 
loyalty, and have literally murdered thousands of good men and 
true because of their political creed. And, lastly, I charge it upon 
the Secessionist newspapers of this country, that, while they enlarge 
on and magnify the few and comparatively small severities of the 
North, they systematically and totally suppress, and by such sup- 
pression conceal from their readers, the thousandfold worse barbarities 
of those States in which the Confederates have revived the horrors of 
La Vendee. Sir, to me the most melancholy feature of this war is, 
that while hundreds of persons in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, 
and Northern Texas have been murdered by pro- Slavery mobs, and 
while an inexorable conscription sweeps into the Southern army 
the willing and the unwilling, the foreigner and the native, and 
while the Southern prisons are crowded almost to suffocation with 
political prisoners, these facts are, although published by the most 
respectable of Republican journals, and although attested by thou- 
sands of refugees from Southern fury, never suffered to appear in our 
pro-Southern organs. With such specimens of the constitutionalism 
of the South before our eyes may we not exclaim with Cicero — 
" may that sovereignty fall which has been evilly acquired, which 
is evilly retained, and which is evilly administered." 



THE SOUTHERN CREED AS STATED BY THE 
CONFEDERATES. 



We have the creed of the Slaveowners, their cause of quarrel, 
and their ulterior designs stated by themselves ; and, with all due 
submission to English Secessionists, I take it that President Davis 
and his Ministers are at least as good authorities on the subject of 
Southern designs as are the more shamefaced English apologists of 
the Southern system, 
c 



26 



President Davis was at the last election the chief of the Fire- 
Eaters, whose motto was — " The extension of Slavery nnder pro- 
tection — or Secession." The Vice-President, Mr Stephen, is explicit 
on the subject, and says of Slavery — " This stone which was 
rejected by the builders — (rejected by the builders, mark you) — 
is become the chief corner-stone of our new edifice." But the 
Vice-President states his principles so broadly and so manfully 
that I will submit the whole paragraph for the consideration of 
those who say that the present war has nothing to do with Slavery. 
Hear the Vice-President — 11 The new constitution has put to rest 
for ever all agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — 
African Slavery as it exists among us, the proper status of the 
Negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause 
of the late rupture and of the present revolution. The foundations 
of our new Government are laid; its corner-stone rests on the 
great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man ; that 
Slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and 
normal condition. This our Government is the first in the history 
of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and 
moral truth. This stone which was rejected by the builders is 
become the chief stone of the corner of our new edifice." 

Most virtuous Vice-President ! " Honest, honest Iago !" The 
President's start in life was based on the great "moral" truth that an 
American debtor need not pay a Britisher. The Vice-President 
builds the Confederacy on the great "moral" truth, that one man may 
own another man's wife and family, and may further steal and sell 
either the man himself or his labour, and may, if the victim rebel, 
put him to death, provided the man thus defrauded have a certain 
infusion of the pigmenium nigrum among the colouring matter of his 
skin. " Superior race !" Why, it is a fact that the large planters 
spend large sums of money in buying up the holdings of the low 
whites, because they find that the " superior" race corrupt the morals 
of the negroes. It is true that the Confederacy is the first in the 
world that has been based on such principles. The days of almost 
universal Paganism give no example of a nation founded on a theory 
so unutterably atrocious as this theory, that a difference of com- 
plexion gives one man a right to rob another of all that makes life 
worth the having. The Confederacy is the first in history, the first 
in the world, which has attained to this altitude of infamy ; for 



27 



never, never in this planet did the heathens of old, cruel as they 
were, ferocious as they were, doom their bondsmen to a bondage so 
hopeless, so unredeemable, and so intentionally degrading as is the 
slave system of America's so-called Christian States. The Romans 
and Greeks taught their bondsmen letters, they set legal limitations 
to servitude, they encouraged the bondsman to look forward to free- 
dom ; the Turk himself rewards with official honours the ablest of 
Ms slaves ; but the Southern, more heartless than the Pagan Powers 
of old, and more remorseless than the Turk, prohibits education, 
forbids emancipation, imprisons the slave in a condition of endless, 
hopeless bondage ; and then puts the great climax on his cruelty 
by mocking him as a person not equal to the educated and free 
white man. De Bow's Review thus lays down the creed of the 
political leaders of this Confederacy, which is founded on the great 
moral truth that the white man is entitled to rob the black : — 
" The poor who labour all day are too tired at night to study 
books." " To make an aristocrat of the future we must sacrifice a 
thousand paupers. The feudal Barons of England were, next to 
the fathers, the most perfect representative Government." Listen, 
I pray you, to the next sentence, as a grave statement put forward 
in all sincerity in the Blackwood of the Southern States : — " The 
Kings and Barons represented everybody, because everybody 
belonged to them." That is an original idea of representative 
government ; but it does not, strange as it is, convey the whole 
dark meaning of its author. 

Some of you will think I am exaggerating. Once more, then, 
let the papers inspired by the Southern leaders, and written to be 
applauded by all Secessiondom, speak for me, for I conceive that 
the Richmond papers are some indication of Southern bias. Here 
is an honest expression of feeling from the Richmond Examiner / 
and I beg you to remember, while hearing it, that the Free North 
gives its people educational privileges unequalled in this or any 
other land, and that it gives those privileges to the poor in the 
form of well endowed and admirabhv managed Free Schools. The 
South is sagacious enough to see in those Free Schools the secret of 
Northern go-aheadiveness, and it hates such means of informing the 
masses. The South would rather " sacrifice a thousand poor men to 
make one aristocrat." Hear this shrill scream from Richmond. The 
Richmond Examiner thus speaks out : — " "We have got to hating 



28 



everything with the prefix free — from free negroes down and up the 
whole catalogue. Free farms, free labour, free society, free will, 
free thinking, free children, and free schools. All belong to the 
same brood of damnable " isms." But the worst of all these abomina- 
tions is the modern sj^stem of free schools. The New England 
system of free schools has been the cause and prolific source of the 
infidelities and treasons that have turned her schools into Sodoms, 
and her land into the common nestling place of howling bedlamites. 
"We abominate the system because the schools are free." These 
people you see are consistent. They want to make the labourer 
feel himself a property, the school makes him feel himself a man ; 
they want to make him dependent, education makes him independ- 
ent ; they desire to establish a worse than Norman feudalism, the 
schools tend to keep alive the demand for equal rights and equal 
laws. They find all their political strength as a party to be else- 
where than among the thinking classes of the North 5 they find all 
that is respectable in Northern literature opposed to Slavery ; and, 
therefore, they denounce a system which places the keys of know- 
ledge and the means of self-elevation within the reach of all as a 
damnable ism. Furiously, fiercely, deliriously, they denounce free 
sehools, and they tell us that the reason of their fury is because the 
schools are free- 
Now, in the name of reason, what were the good men and true of 
the North to do to content a people so crazy on the subject of 
Slavery ? How could they conciliate those who thus made wrong 
their right, and who thus became enthusiastic for wrong 1 With 
the Day Book roundly denying that the Negro is a man ; with 
juries in Florida, Lousiana, and Carolina urging the re-opening of 
the Slave Trade ; with the newspapers of Charleston, Richmond, 
Mobile, Columbia advocating in chorus the abrogation of the treaty 
with England and France for the prevention of the Slave Trade ; 
with Messrs Yancey and Slidell, and an ex-Governor of Alabama 
supporting the agitation for a free trade in Slaves ; with the South 
inventing new encroachments, and carrying them by intimidation ; 
and with some Southern organs arguing that free society was a 
failure, and that the whites too should be made Slaves of, what 
were the moderate but firm men of the Free States to do ? In that 
city of Richmond, whose unpaved streets and unprogressive popula- 
tion represent, only less prominently than the miles of uncultivated 



29 



waste around it, the chief metropolis of a Slave Confederacy, there 
is a journal called the Richmond Enquirer, now the organ of 
President Davis, and, in such exponents of Southern tendencies, the 
North found these revolting sentiments — pray, note the words — 
"While it is far more obvious that ^ Negroes should be Slaves than 
whites, for they are only fit to labour not to direct • yet the principle 
of Slavery is itself right, and does not depend on difference of com- 
plexion. Difference of race, lineage, language, habits, customs, all 
tend to render the institution more natural and durable ; and, 
although Slaves have been generally whites, still the masters and 
Slaves have been commonly of different national descent." I rather 
admire the logic here, for it is sound. If the principle is good why 
stick about the person ; if Slavery is a blessing, why deny it to the 
poor white because of the misfortune of his being white 1 It 
irritates the Richmond Enquirer to see people scruple about com- 
plexion, for he would not stand on such a trifle. He is like the 
sailor who was about to throw overboard a man not quite dead : the 
man remonstrated, but the sailor replied, "you need not be so 
nasty-particular to a few minutes." The Northerns did concede 
much under menace — disgracefully much. They submitted to have 
wars carried on at the expense of the whole nation, though in the 
interests of the Slaveowners alone ; they submitted to see their 
foreign policy the patron of filibusters sent out to win new Slave 
ground for the South ; they submitted to the foul indignity of the 
fugitive Slave law ; they submitted to see their legislature degraded 
by such assaults as the one made on the eloquent Sumner ; they 
submitted in Congress, in Missouri, and in Kansas to the dicta- 
tion of men who " argued with sticks and revolvers, and whose 
violence made bloodshed in the legislature and civil war in Kansas ; 
and they submitted to have Slavery pushed north of that line of 36.30 
to which it had been agreed to limit it. Against their better con- 
victions — in spite of their belief that Slavery was, as Jefferson said, 
more pernicious to the white than to the black — in spite of the ex- 
ample they had before them of the ruinous results of Slavery on 
the social condition of the poor whites of the Slave States — in spite 
of the prosperity of Liberia, Hayti, and our West Indian Possessions, 
the Northerns suffered themselves to be coerced into concessions the 
most humiliating, in their vain anxiety to conciliate the South. 
But the Southern leaders wanted something more than conciliation 



so 



■ — something more than toleration — they would have nothing less 
than domination, for they had entertained great schemes of conquest, 
and they were prepared to set up a Pandemonium and rule it rather 
than not rule at all. They had " in darkness sat, hatching vain 
Empires." The dream of the South was of a Slave Empire, stretch- 
ing, in the words of that eminent Southern, Mr Spence of Liverpool, 
" from the house of Washington to the ancient palaces of Montezuma 
— uniting the proud old Colonies of England with Spain's richest 
and most romantic dominions — combining the productions of the 
great valley of the Mississippi with the mineral riches, the magical 
beauty, the volcanic grandeur of Mexico" — a roundabout way of de- 
scribing a great Empire of whips and chains — an Empire which was 
to reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, and to hold the 
mouth of a river that is the natural outlet for the produce of the 
largest and most flourishing of the Free States. Y/ith such dreams 
in their heads, the politicians of the South desired no terms with 
the North, except terms based on her unconditional submission. In 
the Free North political power is based on representation, representa- 
tion is based on population, and population goes with freedom, and it 
was this fact which made her hateful in Southern eyes. Liberty was full 
of growth, and linked with her the Slave Power saw that Southern 
domination must be lost. Plow savagely the Southerns hated the 
Northerns for their greater prosperity, and how intolerant of freedom 
they had become, may be judged by this extract from the Southern 
Literary Messenger, published at Richmond : — " An Abolitionist is 
any man who does not love Slavery for its own sake, as a divine in- 
stitution ; who does not worship it as a corner stone of civil liberty ; 
who does not adore it as the only possible social condition on which 
a permanent republican Government can be created ; and who does 
not, in his inmost soul, desire to see it extended and perpetuated 
over the whole earth, as a means of human reformation, second only 
in dignity, importance, and sacreclness to the Christian religion. 
He who does not love African Slavery with this love is an Aboli- 
tionist." Such people were not in the humour to be reasoned with. 
They threatened to hang Mr Lovejoy if he set foot in Charleston ; 
they struck clown Mr Sumner on the floor of the house; they 
brandished sticks and showed their " shooting irons" in Congress ; 
they, in shrieking speeches, threatened to board our mail steamers 
and tear Frederick Douglas from under the protection of the British 



31 



flag ; they flamed up over the nomination of Mr Sherman for the 
speakership, and declared that with such a nomination the hour of 
dissolution had come ; in some of the Slave States they decreed the 
punishment of death for the crime of teaching the Slaves to read, 
and, in at least one State, they went so far as to object to the ordin- 
ance of preaching to the slaves. 

THE TIMES OF 1861 DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO 
THE TIMES OF 1862. 

So utterly fanatical did the Southerners get that no later than 
January last year the Times — the London Times — the Times which 
to-day suppresses every fact unfavourable to the South — had an 
article in which the arrogance and the aggressiveness of the South 
were represented as intolerable ; and in that article the North was 
praised for her moderation, and all the blame of Secession was laid 
on the South To-day the Times says that Secession was the desire 
of all parties. In January last year the Times said : — " It is not 
denied in America that the clamour for immediate Secession pro- 
ceeds from that class of the Southern population which has the least 
to lose, and that the wisdom of those who might offer better coun- 
sels is powerless against the ravings of an irresponsible mob." To- 
day the Times has no word too hard for the Northerns ; but here, 
in January 1861, the same paper thus speaks of what it terms 
the justice and moderation of the Northerns : — " If they could not 
for the present make Slavery any better, at least they might take 
care that it grew no worse. They might keep the blot from spread- 
ing, and so provide, by timely legislation, that no new State should 
be infected with the disorder which had been inherited by the old 
ones. That was the original theory of the Abolitionists, and we 
reproduce it for the sake of showing its moderation and its justice." 
To-day the Times would have us believe that Slavery had and has 
nothing to do with the war; but on the 27th January 1862 it 
said : — " To talk about Slavery, to abuse each other, defy each 
other, bludgeon each other about Slavery, was the sole occupation of 
the American Congress." To-day the Times would have us look on 
the Confederates as our friends. No longer than a year ago it 
said of Mason and Sliclell : — " The blind and habitual revilers of 



32 



our country, they Lave done more than any other men to get up th& 
insane prejudice against England which disgraces the morality of the 
Union." To day the Times represents the South as desiring only to 
be let alone • but at the commencement of the war it said — " The 
Slave States have long ceased to be content with sufferance. In 
their passionate effrontery they have loudly declared that Slavery, 
so far from being a blemish, is a positive blessing to a country, and 
that it is the only true basis of labour, and the best cement of social 
institutions. They have claimed the right not only of preserving it 
for the present but of perpetuating it for all time, and of extending 
it into every territory annexed to the American Union. One by one 
they have destroyed or set aside all barriers in the shape of limits or 
compromises, and have driven their principles, by sheer force, down 
the throats of their opponents. As a last resort th'ey are preparing 
apparently to carry out a menace of long standing, and to destroy the 
very fabric of the Union, rather than recognize the fact that any 
other views than their own may prevail in the councils of Govern- 
ment." Again — " What the Free States require they are morally 
justified in requiring ; while what the Slave States demand they can 
only demand at the cost of humanity and right." And again — 
" There is a right and a wrong in this question, and the right belongs 
with all its advantages to the States of the North." Now, my 
friends, you who^believe in the Times, which Times am I to believe % 
the Times of last year or of this present hour — the Times as it stood 
by British principles or the apostate of to-day 1 If the South was 
wrong a year ago, what has she done to make her right since 1 



DIFFICULTIES OF SECESSION. 

The very ground which Secessiondom covers belongs most of it of 
right to the Union, for it was bought with the money of the whole 
nation. Louisiana was bought of France for 1-5,000,000 dols. ; Florida 
cost 5,000,000 in the Florida war ; Texas cost, in the war waged for 
its acquirement, 200,000,000 ; and the forts, custom-houses, and 
navy yards of the South have cost the nation about 500,000,000 of 
the national money. The territory sold to the United States by 
Napoleon I. is as large as the half of Europe. The States of Loui-. 



33 



siana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, the territories 
of Dacotah and Jefferson, the State of Oregon and the Terri- 
tories, have all been cut out of land bought for the Union with 
money chiefly Northern, and in this fact is one of the difficulties of 
the question of peaceable separation. Again, the mountains and the 
rivers are unfavourable to separation. While the chief mountain ranges 
run north and south, the Mississippi runs right up into the heart 
of the Free Territory : will, then, the millions of the Free States con- 
sent to allow the mouth of their river to pass into other hands ? 
Again, there is Texas, for instance, larger of itself than France ; and 
there are New Mexico and Arizona, still larger than Texas. Now, is 
it nothing to the North, is it nothing to us, is it nothing to the 
world, whether or no these vast States of the future shall be cursed 
and impoverished by Slavery, as planned by Mr Stephen, and as 
dreamed by Mr Spence, or shall instead become the homes of none 
but freemen ? 



WHY WE OUGHT NOT TO INTERVENE IN FAVOUR 
OF THE SLAVE STATES. 

The Slave Power has made the war : let her then abide by the 
war she has made. It is all her work. The North wanted peace — 
prayed passionately and imploringly for peace — aye, went beyond 
the bounds of honour and reason to maintain the peace ; but the 
South, armed by perfidy, strengthened by fraud, and full of her 
design to set up a despotism, the most oppressive, the most ag- 
gressive, and the most extensive which the Almighty, in His wrath, 
ever suffered to exist, drew the sword ; why then should we step in 
to save her from reaping the fruits of the sword ? It is not for us, 
whose Empire is scattered all over the globe, to endorse the principle 
of secession. It is not for us, who lately bound our own rebels to 
the muzzles of cannon and blew them into quivering atoms, to 
lecture the North about habeas corpus acts and constitutional forms. 
It is not for us, who have had thirty-one civil wars, and who, during 
the last thousand years, have had a war of some kind every nine 
years, to school the Americans on the wickedness of fighting for 
national preservation. It is not for the countrymen of Clarkson 
and Wilberforce — the champions, par excellence, of emancipation — 



34 



the people who claim to be, above all people, the friends of the op- 
pressed — to forget, at this time, the great issues involved in this 
mighty conflict, and blindly, meanly nurse the memory of some 
miserable grudges, to the forgetting of our duty to a people who, 
with all their faults, and they are many — all their foibles, and they 
are amusing — all their mistakes, and they are fearful — are a great 
people, whose past is not without its halo of heroism, whose progress 
in our time is amazing, and whose future will, despite all present 
appearances to the contrary, find them in arms, in commerce, and in 
intelligence, second to no nation that ever attained a foremost place 
in this our planet. Let us remember our traditions, and deal kindly 
with the Free States in the hour of their trials. We, who have made 
American Slavery the stock theme of our reproaches, the standing 
jest of our merrier moods, the barb of our bitterest jibes, the subject 
of our most solemn expostulations ; we, whose pulpits have thundered, 
and whose platforms have fulminated against Slavery, should have 
some charity for the Northerns, if they, looking to the tone of too 
many of our papers, feel as men of our blood must feel, when they 
see themselves despised, abandoned, derided by those upon whom 
they had counted as their friends. Urged onwards towards emanci- 
pation, and then taunted with the act, cheered on to the conflict, 
and then abandoned in the battle, the Northerns would be more or 
less than men could they now read, without bitterness, those British 
newspapers which, a year or two ago, adjured them to get rid of 
Slavery, and which, now that they are doing it, depreciate their 
successes, malign their motives, exaggerate their reverses, gloat over 
their disasters, and, by every perversion of recent history and present 
fact, seek to foster in free England an unreasoning sympathy with 
a Confederacy based on crime. But it is objected that the 
Unionists are not, as a whole, in earnest against Slavery. True, 
nor are we. They are not, however, fighting for Slavery — not 
banded together for the extension of the peculiar institution — and, 
in fighting those who took arms for the express purpose of increasing 
the area of the Slave curse, they are, however mixed their motives, 
doing good service for the world in fighting the curse itself. If 
those who cavil at the want of thorough honesty of purpose in the 
North were themselves honest on this Slave question, they would 
be more content with results. It is undeniable that practically 
the Federal army is an army of emancipation. As it advances, the 



35 



Slaves go over to it — a fact recognised and deplored by all the 
Southern journals. 

THE BLACK MAN'S OPINION OF NORTH AND SOUTH. 

It is objected that the black man is really treated better in the 
South than in the North. Now, on this point I would take 
Sambo's own opinion rather than that of any white man. Is it 
not odd that the stampedes are all one way 1 Is it not curious 
that the coloured people go North in droves, and will now and 
then fight like lions at bay rather than be carried back to the in- 
dulgence of "the indulgent South," and the blessings of the peculiar 
institution 1 Is there any gentleman in this audience who thinks 
Slavery a blessing % Now is his time to be blessed. It is astonish- 
ing, Sir, what a number of situations there are vacant in the 
South just now. Sir, however deficient in unanimity the North 
may be, we know that, since Mr Lincoln's election, it has punished 
Slavers as pirates ; has recognised the Republics of Hayti and 
Liberia j has concluded with us a treaty for the more effectual sup- 
pression of the Slave Trade ; and has honestly and vigorously ex- 
ecuted agreements which the preceding Governments suffered to 
remain so many dead letters. The coloured man, ignorant as he is ? 
knows all these things. He knows that the Northern at least does 
not rob him of his wife, his children, his labour, his life, and does not 
ordain death punishments for those who venture to teach him the 
rudiments of knowledge — and hence for him the North star is the 
star of hope ; and the North, despite its forbidding climate, and its 
caste distinctions, is his promised land. 

One word more and I have done. 

" What is man ; 
If his chief good and market of his time 
Be but to sleep and feed ? a beast, no more. 
Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, 
Looking before and after, gave us not 
That capability and godlike reason 
To rust unused." 

You approve the sentiment of this quotation ; you applaud it. Re- 
member, then, that in America thousands of honest men have been 



36 

robbed, ruined, snared like foxes, hunted, maltreated, lacerated, 
crippled, shot, hanged, for applauding what you applaud, and for ap- 
proving what you approve. From plundered homes, from rifled 
shops, from blazing farms and burning crops, the loyal men of the 
South have had to fly — glad to escape with their lives from the 
hands of men who resembled not men, but fiends infuriate, and of 
whom it might be said, as was once said of the French, that " neither 
extreme youth nor extreme age ; neither weakness nor deformity ; 
neither the the pangs of sickness nor the agonies of death, could re- 
strain them." Sir, either this insurrection of the Slave Power is 
right or it is wrong. If its cause is just, then it ought to establish 
itself; but if it is unjust, then will its success be the greatest 
scandal of our age. But, if this insurrection is right, other things 
are right. Eight for the feudal Barons of Kussia to draw the sword 
for the preservation of serfdom. Bight for the planters of the West 
India Islands to raise the standard of revolt. Bight for Mr Disraeli 
to set up civil war whenever a general election shows his party to be 
outnumbered. Bight — aye, quite as right, for the garotters of 
London to make a stand against Baron Bramwell and for their 
peculiar institution. 



CONCLUSION. 

Sir, it may be, as Mr Boebuck says, that the Northern States have 
been entirely peopled by the "scum of Europe," and if so, the fact is 
more discreditable to Europe than to them. But, Sir, the scum who, 
within the life-times of persons now living, have built up a nation 
whose progress is unexampled and whose prosperity is unequalled — 
the scum who yesterday were an infant nation, and who to-day are 
a first-class Power — the scum whose property doubles itself every 
ten years, and whose merchant navy is to-day the equal of our own — 
the " scum" whose missionary agencies and educational privileges 
might be copied here with benefit — the scum whose average earnings, 
whose average intelligence, and whose general command of the com- 
forts of life are superior to those of any European commuuity— the 
scum who have opened for our outcasts a bounteous home — who 
have taken our penniless poor and made them rich — who have 
received with open arms the surplus labourers of our labour-market 



37 



and transformed them into the founders of landed families — the 
scum who late received the son of our Queen like an Emperor, and 
who, during the Irish famine, contributed to our starving millions as 
freely as if those millions were their own — the scum who have 
covered a new world with railroads, and studded its noble rivers with 
floating palaces, and spread its Indian wilds with Nature's cloth of 
gold — the scum who fondly dreamt of building up a vast nation, 
where the jealousies, the dynastic wars, the overgrown armaments, 
and the enormous taxes of the Old World should be unknown — a 
great nation of the future among whom education should be uni- 
versal, and among whom labour should reap its full reward — such 
scum are, I take it, at least as respectable as the chivalry described 
by Macaulay and admired by Mr Eoebuck. Mr Carlyle, speaking 
of the people of the United States, says it is no great thing for a 
country to boast that all its sons may eat their fill of roast goose and 
apple sauce ; and I don't say it is ; but if the United States have 
taken millions of those whom we could not employ and have em- 
ployed them — if they have taken ship loads of our starving Irish 
and have replaced their scant potato diet with what Mr Russell calls 
" gross plenty" of corn and pork — and if they have opened Free 
Schools for the children of those paupers, are these any reasons why 
we should sneer at them as the scum of Europe % Sir, there are 
worse things in this world for poverty-pinched stomachs than 
"roast goose and apple sauce." "With all respect for Mr Roe- 
buck, I am content to match the Northerns in point of true worth 
against those good Southern people who take more precautions 
against education than we do against burglary — those Christians who 
enforce concubinage by command, and then deplore the immorality of 
the slaves — those kind planters w T ho neither suffer the black to edu- 
cate himself nor another to educate him, and then taunt him with 
being low in the scale of intelligence— those just legislators who 
make the killing of a slave an offence against the owner only, and as 
such a thing to be settled for in cash — those chivalrous gentlemen 
who deliberately sell their own offspring to groan and sweat under 
the overseer's lash — those aristocrats of Virginia who are pedlars in 
human flesh, and jobbers in human cattle— those theological thieves 
who make out labour-stealing to be gospel, and negro flogging to be a 
-fulfilling of the prophecies— those new friends of ours who mobbed the 
Prince of Wales at Richmond, so that he had to cut short his visit 



to the South — those Southern politicians who proclaimed that Cot- 
ton was King, and that in a few weeks England would be starved 
into the renunciation of her anti-Slavery principles. Sir, if charac- 
ters like these Southerns are to have our aid, then is our national 
recantation complete and our national abasement perfect, for then is 
Cotton indeed King, and a King with his feet on the neck of our 
nation. Sir, if these are to be our favourites, then has there been no 
such choice made since the days when a fatuous multitude cried 
aloud 11 Give us Barabbas." 

Let us await calmly the issue of this great conflict. Do not 
believe that men are dying for naught, and that this great war is 
being waged to no great, good end. A third of the Slave territory 
is already wrested from the Confederacy ; 200,000 Slaves have 
already escaped from bondage ; and the free North, by virtue of the 
greater resources of its freedom, can count each drawn battle as a 
substantial victory. Have faith in liberty, and in the justice of 
Heaven. The North may not, probably will not, subjugate the 
South, but, if the war goes on, it will do a greater and a better 
thing, for it will subjugate that Slave system which caused the war, 
and which is responsible for all the bloodshed and misery that has 
ensued from it. "Wait then in hope, for assuredly the end is not yet. 



